The St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Church in Melbourne last weekend held its annual festival over two days, after it was postponed last year. The festival has been running since the 1980s, and was always open for the entire community to enjoy. This year’s event ran on 6 and 7 November, and was joyfully welcomed by St Mark’s congregation. It also respected the Australian guidelines for COVID precautions.
According to St Mark’s, it was “a time to Walk In Unity together as one family and flock, serve the Lord, open our church to the wider community and raise greatly needed funds for our beloved church.”
Those who participated in the festival enjoyed a variety of activities for adults and children, organised by a team from the church. Everyone relished the traditional Egyptian sweets and Mediterranean style foods offered.
The Facebook page of St Mark’s read: “Through the Grace of God we were blessed with an amazing and successful Annual Festival 2021. Although the organisation and preparation of this event was crammed into the last two weeks and we faced a few hiccups along the way – the love, passion and unity shown by all is truly overwhelming and the weekend was blessed by our loving Lord to be the success it was through you all! All our beloved congregation and servants showed an enormous amount of love to our church and persisted through rain, hail and shine. As Fr Youhanna mentioned we do not measure the success of this event through the amount of money raised but rather through the love, unity and fellowship showed amongst each other – and this was truly felt and visible.”
St Mark’s pastors, Fr Surial Youssef and Fr Youhanna Samuel warmly thanked Mayor Cr.Lina Messina , Mayor of the Darebin City Council for attending and supporting the Festival.